


No Imagination

by rapacityinblue



Series: Where They Never Say Your Name [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-16
Updated: 2012-05-16
Packaged: 2017-11-05 12:05:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rapacityinblue/pseuds/rapacityinblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief, Arthur-centric POV that simultaneously world-builds for <a href="">Where They Never Say Your Name</a> and addresses some of the gaps in Inception canon. This piece is consecutive with <a href="">Curiosity</a>, though it can stand alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Imagination

Arthur is, very simply, the best. It’s not bragging or ego, it’s the truth. He can’t dream a city the way Ariadne or Dom can. He can’t melt his appearance away like Eames, and it’s morbidly easy to tell when he’s the dreamer. There’s a reason he’s a point man -- but he _is_ a point man, and he’s brilliant at it. 

When they go to Paris and Dom leaves to pick over Miles’s current crop of students, Arthur is strongly reminded of how Dom found him. Of course, back then it had been a strictly legal enterprise. Dom had taken him out to dinner with his girlfriend, Miles’s daughter, and they’d talked it over. Just research, interviews, that sort of thing, background prep on their client. If they’re going to militarize a person’s subconscious, Dom explains, they’re going to have to know where his weak spots are, and they don’t want to depend on the client to tell them everything. People lie to protect themselves at all the worst times. 

Dom talks, and Arthur catches every third or fourth word, which isn’t just unusual for him, it’s practically unheard of. Arthur is very type A, very organized, and that was what had caught Miles’s -- and therefore Dom’s -- attention, even though he wasn’t an architecture or even a design student. He’s looking at a degree in general communication, for God’s sake. But now he smiles and nods without really knowing what he’s agreeing to, because Dom’s girlfriend is stunning. 

It’s not a sexual attraction, exactly. Mal is very beautiful, but she’s not really Arthur’s type because Arthur’s never really had a type. Her eyes, though, look through him like they’re collecting his secrets, and her laugh makes him want to tell her everything.

“Mal’s an extractor,” Dom explains when he notices Arthur’s distraction. “Her job would be to get the information from the subject, if we worked that side of the business. But we teach them how to defend themselves.” 

Arthur takes the job because he needs the money, because what they’re asking him for is exactly the sort of thing he excels at, and because the idea of refusing Mal anything is impossible. He works with them for almost five years, and he’s the best man at their wedding.

* * *

Mal laughs at him when they all go under together. “Dream, Arthur,” she teases. “Dream. You do know how to _dream_ , don’t you?” 

Arthur is thorough in every aspect of his life. They’ve lost more than one client when he overturns a stone too many, but Dom shrugs it off. That is, after all, what they hired Arthur for, and he’s become a rising star in the dream sharing business. But all the traits that make him an excellent point man work against him when they go under. His worlds are too rigid, too detailed. Mal takes a Ming vase off the ornately detailed mantle and turns it over in her hands, but when he tries to change the layout of the hotel room, nothing happens, and seconds later Dom’s projections turn on him, aware that this world is not their creation. 

But the first time they try a run with Arthur as the subject, it falls to pieces. His projections never attack. They walk around with a flat, vacant look in their eyes, and they never speak -- to each other, to Mal or Dom. If they were any flatter, they’d only occupy two dimensions of the dream. 

Some of it can be learned -- he gets better at fleshing out the bones of Dom’s mazes, making worlds that their clients can inhabit, though they’re always unbelievably lush. As Dom and Mal train the clients, they train him, and he develops subconscious security nearly as vicious as their own. But his projections never lose their glazed look, and they stop using Arthur as the subject when they dream together.

* * *

The first job Dom brings Eames in on, Arthur suddenly becomes imaginative -- because he’s thinking of all the many different ways he could kill Eames. Eames, who takes compliments as insults and finds the most vile insults complimentary. Eames, who wears paisley shirts with plaid jackets, who wears linen two days in a row and doesn’t even bother ironing it. Eames, who looks like a walking disease vector. But he’s good at what he does, he’s _damn_ good at it, and that’s the worst part because more than anything, Arthur admires competence. Eames has confidence in spades. Of course, it's not the only thing Arthur suspects he has in spades. Leading the list is venereal disease. 

Then Mal dies, and everything is different. 

He’s not there when Dom flees the country. It wasn’t his idea; it was the lawyers’, and Dom doesn’t tell him until he’s gone. Something about deniability, needing to protect him. The police tell him not to leave town, they might have questions. Did he know Dom’s plans? Did he ever see Dom threaten Mal? Did she seem afraid? 

No, he tells them. She never seemed afraid. She was sad. She was depressed. The detectives hum, and thank him for his time, and his word doesn't hold up against that of the three psychiatrists called to testify before the grand jury. He wants to scream at them, even her parents don't believe he did it, but he gathers up his suit coat and thanks them and promises he'll stay in town.

Eventually, he hears from Dom. Through Eames, as it happens, not when they're working a job together but at a charity auction. An old client has sent them both invitations, and Arthur is there to network, because without an architect or an extractor there haven't been any job offers in an uncomfortably long time. Eames is there, because -- actually, he has absolutely no idea why Eames is there, but there's always the possibility it's to boost one of the pieces being auctioned off, so Arthur decides not to ask. 

He's admiring a Stuben bowl, tinted rose, when the other man moves up behind him, his body too close and too warm. He wants to move away, but Eames has him neatly pinned between his bulk and the display case. 

"Arthur, treasure, it's been far too long," Eames says in a tone that implies exactly the opposite, and Arthur bites back on his own sarcasm because what's he meant to say? 

"Mr. Eames." 

He doesn't ask where Eames has been, though Eames tells him anyway (Riyadh, of all places) and Arthur floats in and out of the conversation (there's a Dali here, an honest to God Dali; even if he worked a hundred jobs he could never afford it) until Eames asks, "So, darling, have _you_ considered travel?" 

He's about to wave it off when he realizes what Eames is asking him, and he hisses, "You saw Dom?" 

Eames swears and pulls him into a corner. "You really are shit at this, aren't you? Lord, to think I didn't believe him," and Arthur's not very good at reading people -- not like Eames -- but he thinks the other man sounds almost fond. Eames takes a casual sip of his free champagne, in which he has indulged mightily, these past two hours, and as the conversation rises and falls around them, he says, "I was in Rio before Saudi Arabia. Lovely this time of year; I think the climate would suit you." 

Arthur wants to know what Dom said so badly that he could hit Eames, only that would draw even more attention to them. Instead, he says, "Rio? I've never been, but I'll take it under advisement." His voice heavy with irony, he adds, "I do value your opinion, Mr. Eames." 

Eames responds, "And I do so appreciate your faith, Arthur," then raises his glass. "To absent friends." 

"To absent friends," Arthur echoes, his eyes locked with Eames's as they drink. 

He cites a family emergency when he breaks his lease -- Dom is the closest thing to family he has left, now, so it's not exactly lie -- and pays for a flight in cash the next day.

* * *

The jobs they're working now are different, less comfortable, and more than once Arthur's skills save them from a nasty surprise when they go under. One time they’ve got a mark with crippling claustrophobia; even though they're ready for it, by the time they come up from his subconscious Arthur wants to vomit and he can't walk down the hallway of the hotel for hours. It's oddly exhilarating work, more challenging than anything they were doing before, and even if he wanted to leave, Dom needs him too much. That bridge was burned years ago -- the moment Mal let herself slip from that ledge, even if neither of them knew it then.

Ironically, now, the time he least wants to leave Dom, is when it becomes necessary. 

They work jobs apart, sometimes, when one of them isn't needed or they can't, for whatever reason, find their way to the same city. Dom avoids the UK entirely, the extradition treaties being what they are. They work two jobs with Eames, who is every bit as infuriating as he was before, and still so ungodly skilled that Arthur would slap the man if it weren't so demeaning. He has the audacity to join a dream when Arthur is under, practicing. Arthur’s tried to be an architect, but he can’t summon a third dimension for his buildings. Easier, but not perfect, when he’s building from a plan, so he goes under to practice.

They can’t build from memory, so instead he builds from paintings and pictures. Landscapes are the easiest; Dom pushes him to practice on cityscapes, but left to his own devices, Arthur prefers Escher. His lines are clean and strong, deceptively simplistic, always applicable to a job. And that is why he’s forced to endure Eames’s company at the base of the _Waterval_. He could just tip himself over the edge, but he’s distracted (he wouldn’t go so far as to say impressed) by the fact that Eames is familiar enough with the print to see where he’s made differences, so instead he waits it out. That’s during the first job. 

Mal's there for the second. Arthur sees her, and he's guessing Eames did too from the look in his eyes when they come out of the dream. Arthur's busy packing away the PASIV and glaring at the carpeting below his knees like polyester might be contagious, when he stands up and Eames is suddenly _there_ , very much in his space and not entirely unwelcome. 

"Take care, darling," he says. "Hold down the old homestead for me, hey? Do your best." 

And Arthur knows exactly what he's saying, so there's only a bit of condescension in his voice when he says, "I always do, Mr. Eames." 

They don't see each other again until the Fischer job. Arthur doesn't voice an objection to him joining the team, exactly, although Dom knows him well enough to hear the subtext of his words -- "There's plenty of good thieves." But he does know where Eames is. It's his job to know these things, he tells himself. 

It's odd to be on the same side of an argument as Eames for once, but less than an hour into inception and Arthur feels like he's been suckerpunched twice. Fischer's subsecurity is good. Almost good enough that they could have trained him, though the man doesn't have a totem, which Arthur feels is a sloppy oversight. How can you train someone to defend their dreams if they don't know they're dreaming? At any rate, he missed it, and he hates himself for missing it, but it's done now and they've no choice but to carry on. 

He and Dom’s jackets are a matched set, clothed as Fischer’s concept of hooligans -- outwardly, at least. He’s been through worse, and his shirt, at least, is more or less unchanged, but he still feels grubby and rotten and things are bound to get worse before they get better. 

The news, however, that a death could send them tumbling into limbo -- he thought he'd know, when Dom finally tumbled over the edge into insanity. He thought he'd be able to tell. He'd _thought_ he'd be able to stop it before it ever happened. Arthur’s never much liked being wrong. 

“We do the job, we do it fast, and we get out with the kick, just like before.” 

Eames doesn’t look particularly happy, and Arthur doesn’t feel particularly happy, but he doesn’t see what other choice they have. Eames puts on Browning’s face and mutters, “Is that shirt Burberry, Arthur? Really?” as he pushes by him.

* * *

They’d practiced too many times to count, but this isn’t a dream from the relative safety of the warehouse. The projections are Fischer’s, now, even though it’s still Arthur’s mind they inhabit. Eames laughs, and runs his fingers against the cashmere of a couch pillow, and moves up behind Arthur to murmur, “So predictable, darling.”

A blond woman walks away. Arthur shakes his head to clear away the scent of her perfume. 

He’s not disappointed to have left behind the guise of his cabbie-cum-thug persona, shrugging his shoulders within the comfortable lines of his Zaharoff jacket. Ariadne is looking down at her own ensemble with surprise, sitting a little straighter than she otherwise would. 

“I don’t understand,” she confesses. “I designed a hotel, but this...” 

“Dom didn’t teach you all of this?” He asks, concerned. After all, it wouldn’t be the first corner Dom had cut on this job. 

“He did. I mean, we covered the basics. Dreamer, subject, that sort of thing. But then he went to Mombassa, and there hasn’t been a lot of time.” 

“You designed the layout, and it’s exactly as you taught it to me. You told me it was a hotel. Beyond that, my subconscious fills in the decor.” 

Ariadne purses her lips. “But that only works because Fischer goes to this type of hotel. If he weren’t wealthy --” 

Arthur’s lips twitch in response. “It helps that our clients tend toward a certain class,” he admits. “Otherwise I’m a fairly useless dreamer. My dreamscapes are--” he searches for the words, then settles on, “transparent.” He hears Eames laugh, damnit, and he doesn’t have the luxury of turning around to look for him. Assuming he’d even be able to recognize Eames in whatever face he was wearing now. Assuming Eames is even there, and it’s not his own overactive subconscious. 

They have time, while Dom and Eames ready the gambit, so he lays it out for her more explicitly. “It’s all interplay. Give and take. Like the rain up above; Yusef brought it in. Because he was the dreamer, he made it reality, and we all adapted.” 

“But what about your clothes there? My clothes now?” she asks. 

“Interplay. Fischer wanted a projection of a cabbie. Yusuf had me slotted into the role of a thug. They altered my dress to fit their expectations, and I allowed it. It’s natural. Fighting would draw too much attention from the other projections. That’s all Forging is, really, the ability to change bits and pieces of the dream without alerting the subject.” 

She’s beginning to understand it, and she grins. “That explains Eames’s shirt.” 

He grits his teeth, and says, “Only the cuffs and collar are paisley,” before he realizes he should have just pretended not to have noticed. 

Ariadne is entirely unrepentant, but willing to move on. “Okay. So what about me?” 

“You knew you needed to fit in with Fischer’s projections in this setting. Your subconscious provided the costume.” 

“I came up with this?” 

“Well,” he smiles. She’s easy to smile with. “My mind. I helped. Feel the dream, Ariadne, you designed it. Has anything changed?” 

She looks around, and he watches as she realizes she knows the answer. “The room numbers. They don’t make sense.” 

“To us. But I’ll bet they do to Fischer.” He leans forward, jerking his chin at Dom passing by. “There’s Mr. Charles.” His eyes track Eames a moment later. 

There’s no way, exactly, to know how Dom’s discussion with Fischer is going, though he can feel the eyes on them as Fischer’s subconscious begins to search. “Quick, give me a kiss.” 

Ariadne’s a lovely girl. Just like Mal had been. Her lips are very soft. He knows it’s unlikely to work, and it doesn’t. A moment later, she says, “They’re still looking at us.”

“Yeah, it was worth a shot. We should probably get out of here.” He can’t even make himself sound surprised. He watches Ariadne’s face in the mirror as she realizes she’s been conned. They’re all crooks and thieves, here, even in bespoke businesswear. He hopes she remembers.

* * *

It’s after the Fischer job, in a cafe in Nice, of all places, because that’s where Eames is and that’s how Eames works. He doesn’t come to you. Arthur has a cappuccino because it’s barely past noon, and Eames has wine for more or less the same reason, and Eames says, “Arthur, why on earth would I want to work with you again? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, love, but the last few jobs you’ve had the damnedest teammates. Cobb. _Nash._ There’s a common denominator to be considered.” 

Arthur’s eyebrows go up and he asks, “And what does that say about you?” which gets him an aggressive smile and a cordial tip of Eames’ glass. “Nash was never meant to be a permanent partner anyway,” he adds, “he just got around to betraying us before we got to ditching him,” and he winces internally as he realizes just how telling that statement is. 

If it were anyone but Eames, it might have gone by, but it was Eames, and it doesn’t get by. Smug around a fresh mouthful of wine, Eames says, “What _does_ that say about me, then?” 

“That you’re a pain in the ass,” Arthur snaps, and segues into the job. It’s a _good_ job, quick, simple, and enough money to impress even Eames. And it gives him the chance to play a nameless, large busted floozy, which Arthur knows he enjoys. He finds that fact all together much more galling than it should be. 

“Alright. But darling, you have to promise you’ll let me wake up to something recorded in the last decade,” Eames says, and Arthur snorts into his coffee mug, but he agrees.


End file.
